Be Excellent To Each Other

Where were we talking about this? Someone was saying they don't want a Bluray because it's not region free?

Harmony Remote Multiregion DVD Hack for Panasonic, Pioneer & Sony Blu-ray's Pt.5

Requires a Harmony all-in-one remote control (to send weird control codes to the unit), and only works for DVD playback and not Blurays. No mention of a hack for the Samsung players either (which are quite cheap now -- £140 in Argos). Still, it's something.

Edit -- here's the #post9564935" class="postlink">models this hack works on.

So not my PS3, then?
You're aware that you have to ask them nicely to be able to use their hacky codes?

No, there is no region hack for that that I am aware of. Standalone Bluray decks are £100-150 now though; cheap enough that you might choose one over a PS3 if you really don't care about PS3 games.

Yes. Technical limitation of how they are hacking the Harmonies, not something they've done to be arses (they are sharing a single Logitech account). There are other threads linked to from that one for AllForOne remotes that work by you typing hex codes into the remote. This is how I hacked my very first DVD player, back in the day.

If you get a blu ray drive in a PC, can it be region free.

I don't know who I am kidding, I am never going to buy blu rays.

As long as Blurays are rippable, this has to be true, by definition. Last I heard the very newest disks were not rippable but my information is a few months old.

Since upgrading from a 32" 1366x768 TV to a 40" 1080p one, I am massively keen on Blurays. The difference is far more significant now.

Sit a bit further back from the screen doc.

I can't. My new TV is too lickable.

Since upgrading from a 32" 1366x768 TV to a 40" 1080p one, I am massively keen on Blurays. The difference is far more significant now.[/quote]
I don't doubt that, but I more mean that by the time I can afford a telly where the difference is significant, I will also be able to afford a media centre PC.

"Bah" to media centre PCs. My new telly plays Divx/MKV/yadda over USB and Ethernet.

DVDAnywhere, or whatever it's called, has so far managed to beat all the region-locking methods, I believe.

I was possibly moaning about having got rid of our DVD players before realising the PS3 and 360 are unhackable, but not wanting a non-BluRay player, but wanting it multi-region.

It's possible to get chipped BluRay now, but as it's hardware it adds a lot to the price. £130 premium on the Panasonics here, for example (the BD60/80 are superb, apparently).

I think you mean AnyDVD, and it looks like there are a small number of discs it cannot play, though not many.

Blu Ray can fuck off for another day in the future. I bought my DVD player for Twin Peaks, and I's got that now after 10 years of fucking waiting. I doubt that Blu Ray could significantly impact the quality of a 20 year old TV programme much.

Yeah, that's what I meant Doc.

AnyDVD forum has people copying Blurays -- in this case onto a 50Gb dual layer disc. This site has dual layer BD-Rs for £11 each. WTF? Who pays £11 for a pirated copy of a film?

Hmm, I stumbled across this tonight:

http://www.movietyme.com/catalog/produc ... s_id=45105

It's a UK-sourced Panasonic BD60 player chipped to play Blu-Ray discs from regions A, B and C (region selectable via the handset) and which is apparently compatible with official firmware updates. It's £400 BUT it comes with 10 films of your choice up to a value of £20.99 each, so that's effectively £190 for the player -- not much more than the regular UK asking price of ~£170 (which does include 7 free films, but it's not the most inspiring selection: Ice Age 3, that Wolverine film, the X-Men trilogy, Night at the Museum 2 and Australia). About the only caveat I can see is that a lot of Movietyme's more desirable films are over the £21 limit, which makes the likes of Up and Watchmen Ultimate Edition off-limits. However you can make up for this by grabbing all the under-£21 Criterion discs they've got (which, let's not forget, are region-locked and, for the most part, unlikely to be released outside the US any time soon)

(For what it's worth, the only other source of brand-name multiregion Blu-Ray players is http://www.multiregionupgrades.com -- their upgrades cost £99, or £170 to have it fitted, and you have to supply your own player anyway. All things being equal, the Movietyme offers looks FAR better.)

Im not an audio or video phile, but I have a 37'' panasonic 720p plamsa TV and BluRay is a significant improvement over DVD (using PS3 for playback)

Unless the DVD is very very cheap, im buying Blurays from now on

Doing it like that is crazy. A guy I know compresses them to 1080p DIVX or whatever it is and puts loads on one disc. I mean at £11 a disc you would have to

Okay, so obviously I'm a little behind the times here, but did anyone else know that for the past few months, Aldi, eBuyer, Comet etc. have been selling a cheap no-name Blu-Ray player that can be made multiregion (both DVD and Blu-Ray) via a handset hack?

It's being sold by eBuyer for £80 as the Foehn & Hirsch BD2101, by Aldi as the Tevion DVD1100UK (for £120, although it's apparently £60 in some stores), and it was sold by Comet as the Curtis DVD1100UK (they've apparently stopped selling it, flogging off surplus stock for £40).

There's more info on the player (and the region hack) at http://www.seeyounextwednesday.com/blog ... ay-player/

It's all about future-proofing. By that token, even if one doesn't currently have a large TV, buying Blu-rays rather than equivalent DVDs makes sense if you have a BD player. I'm sure some of us regret buying VHS tapes in 2000 and 2001 (*raises hand*).

You'll never be able to future proof. Scoundrel film companies and music producers will continually come up with different formats to force you to buy everything again. They're cunts, them.

I'm bought into the Blu Ray thing now. Though the difference is minimal for me on my 32" at the minute I'm thinking of how awesome it will be when I eventually buy a 100" projector or something..

At least all your DVDs will work in a Blu-Ray player, though. There's no need to rebuy TV series, mainly just films.

As long as they stick with the 5" disc format, I'd hope that they would keep DVD compatibility. DVD has very quickly become ubiquitous in a way that I suspect Blu Ray never will.

What they need is an irritating advert at the beginning of every Blu-Ray expounding the benefits of Blu-Ray via the medium of gasping pricks and big explosions while a gravel voiced arse blarts "BLURAY!" at you.

Hey, at least you can skip it. How many copyright warnings have you been forced to sit through in your life?

12.

Dude. How have you coped?

It's been rough. The counselling helped.

Wow man. Big up to your bad self.

I like it when the movie plays straight off the bat with Blu Rays (and DVDs and HD-DVDs for that matter). I know you've spent ages on your fancy animated menu, but I'll look at the extras when I'm good and ready. Now knob off.

Ooh, that reminds me, I should have Army of Darkness on Blu Ray waiting for me at home.

I got a new TV a month or so back, and at the same time swooped on my first blu-ray player, and am very happy with it all.

Christ, DVD menu designs are often completely useless, aren't they. So many of them give barely any clues as to how to navigate through them or provide any meaningful user feedback on your actions. And don't get me started on having to suffer animations or movie clips before my action is processed: seriously, 'designers', user-interaction should be near-instant practically always.

Anyway, yes. Pirated movies don't have any of this shit, usually, so there's no sitting through or having to skip (if you even can) adverts or navigating through tedious menus before your film starts.

I watched a programme on terrestrial TV a few days ago. It was stormy outside, so the picture was noisy. My mind phased that shit out within minutes and I carried on my enjoyment. On my 24" screen, I see absolutely no reason to try out Blu-Ray any time soon.

Why do BD discs take so fucking long to startup?

I depends on your player. I think (and I'm actually guessing here) that BD menus are Java based and depend entirely on the processing power of your player.

HD-DVDs took a while too, but not as long as BD. Thinking about it, I don't think I have any BDs that go straight to the movie. I remember the WB HD-DVDs used to.

The PS3 has oodles of processing power and my Dark Knight and Ghostbusters BDs take about 1.5-2 minutes just to get to the menu.

Also, please excuse my use of "BD discs" in my previous post.

Really? I watch Blu Ray thorugh a media center [sic] PC with WinDVD 9. The PC is Windows 7 Pro 64bit with an Athlon X2 3800+ and 2GB of RAM. Hardly a supercomputer, but the menus are usually up and running in about 30-40 seconds. I'll time Ghostbusters later if you like.

My PS3 takes a few seconds to get to the menu of anything, including Dark Knight. Have you got automatic-allow BD Live turned on?

Someone remind me later and I'll double-check.